[quote="factory" I wouldnt be too worried about the weight of the Pina (trainer after all) but want a nice ride feel. What do you guys think?[/quote]Well Oria made some damn good tubing.... but... this isn't it... it is the lowest grade they made, not even cro-mo. I can't think offhand of an equivalent modern Reynolds grade down that far, 500 possibly?I am very surprised that Pinarello made anything out of that tubing, I always thought it was a top company like De Rosa?CheersRichard

View itemOptimistic starting price, but check out that derailleur I read on Disraeli that Suntour invented the three jockey wheel derailleur to solve the issue of chain slap on bicycles with a wide gear range, and according to the author, it worked beautifully. It suffered at the hands of Suntour's marketing team ( ), and eventually they were forced to succumb to market pressures and replace it with the less effective long cage derailleur.

A nice bike with a full set of touring braze ons. you don't come across a lot of Nishikis that arn't rebranded as Repcos.

There is also a small lowish end Bridgestone mountain bike on gumtree NSW, well worth the $29 asking price.Bridgestone MB-5

Well, I'm forever the optimist . I don't think it's overly optimistic though, the 8 speed 105 & 600 gear is good quality stuff, similarly the better Giant frames are highly underrated. Time will tell. It does say negotiable, and the degree to which it's negotiable is ... I guess... up for negotiation.

And while forum user LG is being mentioned regarding steel Giants, a Giant Kronos (probably just a Kronos GS), , interesting for a couple of things. First, you would never carry stuff for long with a top rear rack mount like that. But secondly, I have recently put together a 62cm 1997 Kronos that I got from forum user Rustguard 3 years back. It takes a 27.2mm seatpost, so must be reasonable Cr Mo. They only have top tubes on the shorter end of the spectrum (62x57, 59x56) so fit me fine. It was nice and light so I got another Kronos in the next size down, 59cm, the other day. What's different is that it has a tight fitting Tiogo steel 27.0mm seatpost. It came with original spec RSX STI, RSX triple 46/36/26 cranks and RSX brakes so looked like it was not the lower spec Kronos GS model like the one advertised - but it looks like Giant played around with spec a bit. On BikePedia.com the 94 to 96 Kronos models were made of heavier but still good tube with 26.4 and 26.8 seat posts, and the 98 model changed to aluminium. It's interesting that the RSX A410 front derailleur as supplied on a couple of years of the Giant Kronos is recommended by various of the French revival sites associated with Velo Orange as being good for STI shifting with a smaller large chainring in the mid-forties teeth and a big range down to a small third ring or even for wide range 2 rings.

I looked them up and there was comment from Jobst Brandt about having had that type of fork fail, as well as a long thread on Velocipede Salon. Failures seem to occur either because it is hard to get the solder into the crack between the internal lug and the fork leg tube, or because the lug finishes square and creates stress at that point. Note that the Cinelli SCA lug that you pointed to on velobase.com is cut away at the sides and does not finish square, but that some others that have copied the style do. I still like the look of sloping shouldered fork crowns, but I'll happily keep to the externally lugged one on my Velosmith for now.